


Brothers Unaware

by kk721



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Angst, Brotherly Angst, Canon Related, Family, Feels, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, One Shot, Sad, Siblings, brothers relationship, dealing with death, grieving over noah, implied referenced character death, in game event, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 09:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15264780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kk721/pseuds/kk721
Summary: There had never been room in his heart for sheer hate, all the throbbing energy in there had been sucked in and raped by both his stubborn loyalty and his blind determination, leaving everything else to die in wilful apathy.That day he had sowed the seeds of abandon and its own roots had crawled in Noah's chest for years and years, growing silently in the darkness of his brother's agony.





	Brothers Unaware

**Author's Note:**

> This was a part of a longer fiction I resumed working on lately, at some point it didn't fit any more in there.  
> So I cut it, polished it and made it into a one shot.  
> Always high on the angsty side, as my inspirational wont dictates.

**Brothers Unaware**

 

 

 _And now thou [art] cursed from the earth which has opened her mouth_  
_to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand._

 _-Genesis 4:11, LXX Septuagint_  
  
  
  
✠

 

  
The cockpit was bathed in pure madness, the spring of it being frenzy humes setting and discussing and organizing and deciding; sometimes yelling to cover the raising complaints, sometimes just sighing out of effort or exasperation for a lack of a quick solution at hand. The fact that the older person in there was actually nineteen years old, royal and very authoritarian wasn't facilitating the discussion. At times, a buzzing sound crept into the frowsy air as the handy microphone was grabbed in turn by the worn out youngsters.

But the crowded cabin utterly filled with white noise was a distant neglected world to Basch.  
  
He was the only one in the Strahl's spare room, then. The only one alive. Noah's dead body was lying naked on the cot, unceremoniously stripped of his Imperial guise and left resting - _abandoned_ \- in its livid slumber.  
  
Basch, crouched down at his brother's feet with his back against the couch, was holding the breastplate since a while, looking at it through swollen eyes and an old perspective of life that was wearing thin with every ache suppressed in the creases of his heart.  
  
It weighed a lot, in his hands and on his threadbare existence. Lifting it, he lightly brushed his nose to it inspiring the intense and penetrating scent of his late brother, inhaling it from where his twin's heart had been clouded by dark and too finely crafted metal along with many untold emotions. Mostly negative, emotions.  
  
_How could hatred impress itself on steel and leather?_  
  
How could he know, there had never been room in his heart for sheer hate; all the throbbing energy in there had been sucked in and raped by both his stubborn fealty and his blind determination, leaving everything else to die in wilful apathy.  
  
Oh but, nonetheless by then, he was sure that wrath, hate and despair had a scent. An intense scent. Rusty, acrid and damp, smelling like thousands of sweating armored soldiers bleeding in the pouring rain straight into a swirl of debris, smashing their tormented faces into the filthy coppery mud.  
Tasting displeasing and metallic like he had just swallowed a fistful of old coins and still had some gil stuck in his throat.  
  
But he swore to himself he could track something else along, something that shared the same stench as well as the same negativeness.  
  
_Fear_.  
  
Fear had flashed in streaks, had dripped in thin ribbons of scent adorning the inner side of the armor through fights, through spying games. Through life.  
  
_What kind of fear, I wonder._  
  
The _fear_ of being constantly out of place? Or that of being in the right place? Perhaps of being alone, having closed outside everyone but his own demons from the past. The fear of ruthless mistakes and the fear of being too weak to accept them, maybe? Or the fear _needed_ to engage the world outside that metal shelter, tackling with a reality too often colliding with his own individuality?  
Perchance the fear of absorption lines so frayed he would have never had the strength to put himself together again, were they to crumble and let the stream of emotions flow all over; so everything was held in its dark, numb place by a full plate, whatever the reason had been.  
  
Or maybe it had been just _fear_ itself ringing too much into his ears, its bloody cacophony echoing and resonating among the horns of his mask. Beating time with a loud ticking to which he started moving, diverging sickly to a self-destructive path while yelling with his mouth shut and loathing with his heart shattered.  
  
_.. were you so broken, Noah?_  
  
The saddest thing to him was that the armor smelled more like a den than a fancy metal suit.  
Noah hadn't lived in Archades, hadn't inhabited the fancy rotten city he swam into digging for the sin and wickedness of others to save himself from drowning, no. He had lived bounded in his own Judge Magister's armor and in the bluish black, scratched leather he had worn under it.  
One little child angered, one little boy struggling had been in there all that time, crying a silent desperation while only curses and blows reached the outer dimension.  
  
He looked at his brother's vestiges, still sprawled on the makeshift bed with no shame for the late man dignity and turning an insane shade of sick gray.  
  
His peaceful expression was an anguishing contrast stabbing furiously Basch's awareness. Constantly, like a merciless dagger pounding hard in the flesh of his conscience, hitting a raw nerve that lacerated deeper and deeper into his head already full of gashes.  
  
The former Captain's tormented gaze indulged on the bruises his face still wore, on the wounds that marked the limbs as a baleful memento.  
  
He wondered if his brother had ever smiled just once, during his life after Landis' siege. If he had ever found love in Archades; if he had ever enjoyed a jest, a meal, a story, a trip; a company that wasn't the icy nook eclipsed inside his walls of steel.  
  
If he had ever found a brother at heart to replace him. Noah had always been such an emotional boy.  
  
But the answer was already obvious to him, it laid right there under his eyes. Given the amount of pent-up pain and frustration amassed over his twin's existence and eventually resulted in a wrath flare, deep inside himself he gravely doubted any of those carefree and light digressions had actually happened. Like his, Noah's whole life had been voted to an inner war.  
  
Some battles had been won, some had been lost and at some point of his long depriving journey, Basch found himself at the end of a merciless path that crossed the same one Gabranth had chosen for himself. Floods of blood had been shed and rivers of intimate thoughts had been crushed between judgment and necessities; other regrets had been laid to rest upon his shoulders like a wholly dead weight for him to carry perpetually.  
  
Ah yes, he was still the unavailing knight condemned to succumb under his burden.  
  
_Crimson bonds had been tied and severed too_.  
  
Aye, crimson bonds like connecting strings, he could still see them branching out to embrace and to engulf everyone whom at some point had hit that road, piercing them like a red thread through the needle eye connecting one to another in the quest for salvation, the quest for a new age for humes and a bright dawn on Ivalice. Blood and tragedy both had fit like a perfect glove on their existences, had it not?  
  
In the end, they had won. Surprisingly enough, the underdogs were on the winning side. But victory partly smelled like fear did in Noah's armor, to the oldest of the fon Ronsemburg twins.  
  
_What_ _now, I'm in for another rusty coin to bite._ _You knew quite well its flavor, right brother?_  
  
In for another sip of that terrible and disappointing taste, wasn't he? And in the cold copper, he sunk his teeth like a wounded beast, clenching painfully like he could crush his own fate between gritted fangs and devour it. Because all the things lost.. the mortifying null of losing them made him feel hopelessly undone and lone, a disheartened man established on guilt and getting old on regrets.  
  
Yes, hope for the future, that he had said more than once to Her Highness. That he had talked about more than once with anyone. But he preferred to leave hope to others while drowning in his own anguish, so far he had proven himself to be pretty unstable as an optimistic man at heart. He was born to follow those who cradled hope, not to nourish hope by himself.  
  
  
_All because I could not bear the pain for a home turned a scorched house in a wrecked land._  
  
_I turned my back and he cried._  
  
_I walked away and he fell apart._  
  
  
That very day Basch had sowed the seeds of abandon and its own roots had crawled in Noah's chest for years and years, growing silently in the fecund void of his bitter agony. For all his life he had dreaded the thought that his past choice could easily have caused the sprouting of a wretched tree and that its leafless and edgy outgrowth would have reached him sooner or later.  
  
And so the unavoidable happened, at last, he had been pierced through by Noah's frantic affliction.  
  
Basch wept then the last silent tears, blaming himself for the unforgivable crime of having slammed his beloved brother's mind into utter chaos, for having driven his dear twin's life towards destruction. Pretty mocking that by then he knew better than he had ever known what the word _home_ had meant to himself.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Her Highness had interrupted them while Gabranth was melting away his hatred to bid his brother a heartfelt farewell with an extorted promise annexed. Such a fragile and meaningful moment.. the worst timing she could ever score.  
  
She had rudely questioned him just out of the blue -right after warily peeking at them from the flight deck- regarding why he hadn't abandoned Gabranth aboard the Bahamut like he had with Vossler on the Leviathan, and neither she had cared to keep a lower tone out of respect. Ashelia was definitely too indelicate and tactless for her own goodness.  
  
For a split second, he had perceived some kind of ill resentment inflaming already argumentative words, though he couldn't read her gray lines and didn't care much to ignite the handful of sparkles she had sprung around him.  
  
He froze there, in front of the young princess – _a damn kid!_ \- with dark circles around her glossy eyes (for what or whom, he had wondered) and a whole kingdom to raise and lift from the privations of war. The Captain went speechless in the most peculiar way, peeking at Noah frantically doing the same with a pitiful expression.  
  
_Seriousl_ _y.. Damn, youngster._  
  
First, he had furrowed, trying to understand her point in asking such a thing, trying to swallow the muddy coin her scornful behavior crammed down his throat.  
  
_By the Gods.._ hadn't she something more urgent to take care of? Wasn't she worried sick for the braggart gone satisfying his own need to show off on a leading role?  
  
Maybe he should have questioned her maturity _before_ giving everything away to protect her out of duty, to hell all his undisputed loyalty crap.  
  
He knew pretty well what had meant for her and what she had felt when Gabranth had confessed his kingslayer deed to stir her but had she forgot how _Basch_ himself was the one accused and grounded for it? The one kept in an underground dungeon for 2 damn years?   
And it was _his_ brother she was arguing about now.  
  
Alright, Vossler had indeed been a Dalmascan knight. He had indeed been her only aid and her sole fundamental point for said two years, in his stead. But this was his _damn brother_. Half of his origin, the other side of his own mirror. The creature he had shared his mother's womb with, the constant presence he split air he breathed with for half his life.  
  
“Majesty, we kne-” he halted and sighed, tuning down the grasping all the quiet composure he could “I certainly knew not that the whole Dreadnought was about to explode in such a violent burst, annihilating everyone aboard and in the range of a fleet.”  
  
_Well, no one would have believed Judge Ghis such a moron as he proved to be, also. However, you seem to forget a little something about your magnificent Captain Azelas._  
  
  
  
  


Larsa Ferrinas Solidor, from the cockpit threshold he didn't dare to trespass, demanded his attention back to the Strahl's interior with a slightly quivering voice, a little hand gloved in white placed over his mouth to screen his pre-teen and delicate nose.  
  
"We'll be landing soon, Captain. We must hurry, I am sure Judge Zargabaath will likely demand a meeting with us both and lady Ashe too, as soon as we set foot on the Alexander.. If your decision is taken and granted to us, of course."  
  
The new Emperor -a lad so young he wasn't even reaching the half of the door frame- hesitated without looking towards the cot, forcing himself to keep his eyes focused on Basch in waiting for -requiring- a response.  
  
The Landissian stared at him for a moment, a grieve expression stiffening his Northern features.  
  
Why were all the Royals around him so young, so inexperienced, so defenseless? If part of that notion made him feel useful and gallant and _so rightful_ , the other just bit into his adult sophistication and left him positive that none of them was really ready to bear the burden of ruling, no matter how wise and just a twelve years old might be despite his age.  
  
He sighed tiredly, paying a last thought to their near future: sadly crushed desires and isolated lives that would stretch forward in time for a country healthy enough to gift to them a fancy bed to sleep in and a motionless void that would have left said bed cold for a lifetime. They'd learn soon enough what life voted exclusevily to a land would have entailed.  
  
In the end, he offered a light but rueful smile out of symphathy -pity, perchance- to the youngster.  
  
"Matter at hand, we need to solve a problem first, my Lord." he put down the breastplate and exhaled heavily before grabbing something else from the ground: Noah's helm shone struck by the sterile light of the cabin, the same that was shedding a harsh glare on his own seasoned face. There was a sinister gleam glowing intermittently on its most shiny parts. The piece of armor was reduced by half, the shaped metal ripped open by the final blow delt to his late brother by Vayne.  
  
"I'm afraid we'll need to find something to replace it, for I do not think I can cut my hair so neatly in such a short time. Or my beard, same reason given, my Lord."  
  
_Neither I harbor the belief I can keep up with this pantomine without a solid mask on, right now_.  
  
But this he did not voice out loud, for the boy standing across him looked like he was already on the verge of snapping off with a loud crack -hell, for a split second he held his breath expecting to actually hear _that_ \- and Basch had not a single reason, aside from his own consumed disenchantment, for smashing him definitely.  
  
He felt he was starting to understand what Noah had thought and fought while hiding inside his helm, trapped inside his cruel alias.  
  
He looked at the small curls of torn metal: they were crinkled on the fringes, jagged and as sharp as the edge of his blade in ripping open a hole on the left side of the helm. It attracted his thumbs in grazing that force like he could feel its power through the damage, until thin red trails slowly traced themselves on the tip of his calloused fingers. He stared unwrung at the scratches.  
  
“Moreover, the scar above my left eye.. it's thick and cospicuos. Too many people have seen it, my Lord, the thought of someone recognizing me due to it sound not so impossible and we need to consider 'tis.. I'm a dead man, mind you, and we're landing in Rabanastre. Nothing shall I leave to chance, if I am to take Gabranth's post and throw away my own identity.”  
  
_We won't let the little Emperor know you're the one who gifted me this resounding reminder that screams about my weakness to you all over my face, right Noah? Let him keep his candor for a while; until I can spare him these harsh truths of moving fraternity I'll keep my mouth shut._  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Maybe that was vengeance, a divine one.  
  
Had Noah already won over the almighty Gods? For it looked like they were demanding a day of reckoning for Basch's debt, one they shall not leave unpaid.  
  
Daring enough, perhaps his late twin was actually smiling kindly -lovingly- upon him, for he had finally led him exactly where he had longed to see him. In his place. This time had been up to Noah to turn his back and leave him all alone. And though the circumnstance was totally different, even if the other had left with an ease smile, a growing hint of affection in his eyes and his hand gripped tightly into those of his thoughtful -remorseful- brother, Basch felt cruelly abandoned nonetheless.  
  
And maybe what he was smelling then was the kind of fear he hadn't had the strength to consider and to speculate on, the one he hadn't had the guts to take into account.  
  
The fear of being mercilessly abandoned without a legitimte reason.  
  
So eventually there were the thick velvets hastily falling on the man once known as Captain Basch fon Ronsemburg of Dalmasca, enclosing him with less glory and gain than wounds and scars. And pain. And solitude.  
  
Everything was ready for him to start anew and keep walking forward in his twin's stead, putting at rest his own existence to carry on his brother's.  
  
_Starting anew.. Aye, again._  
  
He felt a liquid laughter seething in his chest, his nerves scratching loosely under the thick and scarred skin of a born and bred warrior with a doubtless talent for the passivity of his own feelings.  
  
Basch tried to swallow and almost ran out of breath when another old coin stuck itself in the highest part of his parched throat, this time around flooding his lungs with corroded air and filling his mouth with a borrowed sensation he was beginning to know pretty well.  
  
In spite of the loss, his inner self was going to be quite rich from then on.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed my useless rant, even though it was a bit sad.  
> Comments are appreciated, feedbacks and critics are loved.


End file.
